Brian Naylor

In this role, he covers politics and federal agencies, including transportation and homeland security.

With more than 30 years of experience at NPR, Naylor has served as National Desk correspondent, White House correspondent, congressional correspondent, foreign correspondent and newscaster during All Things Considered. He has filled in as host on many NPR programs, including Morning Edition, Weekend Edition and Talk of the Nation.

During his NPR career, Naylor has covered many of the major world events, including political conventions, the Olympics, the White House, Congress and the mid-Atlantic region. Naylor reported from Tokyo in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, from New Orleans following the BP oil spill, and from West Virginia after the deadly explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine.

While covering the U.S. Congress in the mid-1990s, Naylor's reporting contributed to NPR's 1996 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism award for political reporting.

Before coming to NPR in 1982, Naylor worked at NPR Member Station WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, and at a commercial radio station in Maine.

The control tower at a major metropolitan airport can be a pretty chatty place.

Some of the chatter comes from air traffic controllers literally and phonetically spelling out the routes pilots need to follow to their destinations, using the foxtrot-lima-sierra-tango alphabet.

When a weather issue — say, a line of thunderstorms — pops up, routes have to be changed, often while the plane is already on the taxiway. So the controllers spell out new directions to the pilots, the pilots take them down and then carefully read back the instructions to the tower.

For months now, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have been sparring at each other from afar. On Monday they'll do it face to face, on a stage at Hofstra University on Long Island in New York.

Debates have been a mainstay of presidential campaigns, it seems forever. But that's not quite the case: The first general election debate didn't occur until 1960, in a Chicago TV studio, between Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy.

Monday's debate between Clinton and Trump will take place on the 56th anniversary of that first debate.

The upcoming presidential election will mark a surprising first. Yes, a woman will be on the ballot as a major party nominee. But in addition, for the first time ever, the Organization of American States is sending poll observers to watch as U.S. voting takes place.

The OAS, based in Washington, D.C., has previously observed elections in 26 of its 34 member nations, but never before in the United States. The mission will be led by former Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla.

Former President Bill Clinton will take his wife's place at several campaign events in the next couple of days. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has been recovering from pneumonia at home after abruptly leaving a Sept. 11 commemoration ceremony in New York on Sunday, where her campaign said she became overheated and dehydrated.

Hillary Clinton was due to appear at fundraisers in California on Tuesday and make an appearance for a campaign event near Las Vegas on Wednesday, where her husband will now go instead.